Grindr Exec Resigns After President Says He's Opposed To Same-Sex Marriage
- By
- Carlos Santoscoy
- | December 12, 2018
A Grindr executive on Friday announced that he was leaving the company following comments by its president that he does not support same-sex marriage.
Scott Chen, the president and former CTO of the hook-up app for gay and bisexual men, reportedly described marriage as a “holy matrimony between a man and a woman” in a now-deleted Facebook post.
INTO, an LGBT site owned by Grindr, reported that Chen made the remark in a November 26 post.
“There are people who believe that marriage is a holy matrimony between a man and a woman. I agree but that’s none of our business,” Chen wrote in Chinese, according to INTO. “There are also people who believe that the purpose of marriage is to create children that carry their DNA. That’s also none of our business. There are people that are simply different from you, who desperately want to get married. They have their own reasons.”
Chen made his comments in the course of sharing an INTO article about Cher Wang, the president and CEO of Taiwan-based HTC, and her support for groups vying to influence Taiwan voters to reject a recent referendum on marriage equality.
(Related: Taiwan voters reject same-sex marriage.)
“I'll never buy HTC products ever again, and I'll never donate a cent to any Christian groups in Taiwan!” Chen also wrote.
Chen claimed that INTO had incorrectly translated his comments and explained that they were based on his own personal experience as a heterosexual man. “This is how I feel about my marriage,” Chen wrote. “Different people have their different feelings about their marriages. You can't deny my feelings about my marriage. … I support gay marriage.”
In a Medium post, Landon Rafe Zumwalt, head of communications at Grindr, announced that he was stepping down.
“As an out and proud gay man madly in love with a man I don’t deserve, I refused to compromise my own values or professional integrity to defend a statement that goes against everything I am and everything I believe,” Zumwalt wrote. “While that resulted in my time at Grindr being cut short, I have absolutely no regrets. And neither should you.”
“For those who remain, those who will continue to fight for our community from within, know I will be cheering you on from the sidelines. Persist. Make your voices heard. And never compromise who you are for someone else,” he added.
Chen moved into the role of CTO after China-based tech firm Kunlun Group acquired Grindr in 2017.